400,000 march for

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An estimated 400,000 people took to the streets of Manhattan on Sept. 21 for the largest single climate change pro­ test to date.

The People’s Climate March, which took place two days before a one-day United Nations Climate Summit, was about twice as large as organizers had expected. There were so many present that by the time the back of the march began to move—over four hours after the front stepped off—many thousands of people had already finished the 2.1mile route. It took more than six hours for the entire march to end.

The event was organized by 350.org and the liberal internet activism group Avaaz, with over 1500 endorsing orga­ nizations. While the New York march was the largest, 2646 companion rallies took place in 162 different countries.

The Northern California People’s Cli­ mate Rally filled Oakland’s Lake Merritt Park Amphitheater with 4500 activists and was endorsed and sponsored by a broad range of 170 regional organiza­ tions. The speakers’ platform featured climate activists from frontline commu­ nities, students engaged in divestment actions, representatives from the Sierra Club and Bay Area 350.org—as well as socialists, who linked the struggle to re­ solve the climate crisis to the abolition of capitalism’s oil wars and to the aboli­ tion of capitalism itself.

Despite political flaws, the giant New York march was a major step toward building a unified movement against climate change. The diverse crowd in­ cluded groups from around the conti­ nent representing many different en­ vironmental and social causes. Large contingents of indigenous people, antifracking activists, anti-nuclear activists, tar sands pipeline fighters, scientists, union members, antiwar veterans, and eco-socialists were present.

Groups promoting immigrant rights, freedom for Palestine, and justice for the victims of racist police violence were also present. One contingent car­ ried a 300-foot-long banner that read “Capitalism = Climate Chaos,” created by the organizers of the Flood Wall Street civil-disobedience event that took place the next day.

That event, which fell on a Monday, drew an estimated 2000 protesters, who blocked Broadway for about eight hours until cops finally unleashed tear gas and made over 100 arrests to break up the crowd. The symbolic blockade had no immediate goals other than to close the street and get media atten­ tion—or “to confront the system that both causes and profits from the crisis that is threatening humanity,” accord­ ing to the “call to action” on the event’s website.

Many of the participants interviewed by “Democracy Now!” showed up to protest against fossil-fuel extraction and burning. “We come from a land that Tony Savino / Socialist Action is heavily resource-rich, and we came to tell the world that we’re not going to be a resource colony anymore, and enough is enough,” said one Diné (Na­ vajo) activist.

The day prior to the Climate March, the ecosocialist System Change Not Cli­ mate Change coalition and Green Par­ ty-backed Global Climate Convergence held a one-day “Converge for Climate” conference, with dozens of workshops at various locations around lower Man­ hattan on topics including indigenous peoples’ rights, anti-racism, fossil-fuel struggles, renewable energy, U.S. im­ perialism, Marxist ecology, and ecosocialism.

Workshops brought together people engaged in direct struggles against pol­ lution and resource extraction, with writers and theorists who presented capitalism as the source of the crisis and socialism as the solution. The clos­ ing plenary featured Olga Bautista, an (continued on page 4, in “400,000 call for”)

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INSIDE SOCIALIST

Women win! — 2 $15 Now & Union! — 3 Hong Kong revolt — 5

Eco-socialist program — 6 Canada news — 8 Euthanasia — 9

Vietnam documentary — 10 U.S. bombs Iraq/Syria — 12